Cybersecurity incident involving Canvas

Following technical verification throughout today, we can now confirm that Canvas is back online and all normal learning and assessment activities may resume.

If you are unsure of the status of any scheduled assessments, please check your Canvas course for any updated information. We ask that you allow time for teaching staff to update the relevant details and for course coordinators to communicate with you.

You may find this update and FAQs from Instructure useful for understanding what happened with this incident.

We appreciate that the recent cyber incident may have caused concerns, and we thank you for your patience as we’ve worked through this complex situation.

The University has been advised by Instructure that the global cybersecurity incident has now been resolved. Canvas is currently undergoing final technical verification following the incident. 

The system remains unstable, and we strongly recommend you do not log in or attempt to use it until formally notified.  

We understand the impact this outage has on your studies. Appropriate accommodations will be made for any assessments or learning activities affected by this downtime. 

We will send an all-staff and all-student email as soon as Canvas is fully operational. 

Due to the disruption to Canvas, all tests and assessments scheduled for today (Friday 8 May) that are accessed or completed in Canvas have been postponed.

If you require further information, please contact your course director.

Note, this was also emailed to all students at 1.42pm.

Please be aware that the University is affected by a global cybersecurity incident involving the Canvas learning management system used by our staff and students.

Canvas is currently offline. This could impact teaching activities planned for today. Please continue with normal teaching activities where possible. The University is aware that some accommodations may be necessary where assessments are concerned.

The University is working urgently on workarounds to minimise the impact on teaching and learning today and will provide more information here as it becomes available.

The cybersecurity incident relates to Canvas data held by a third-party provider, Instructure. This is not a breach of the University’s systems, and no other systems are at risk.

Some University learning and teaching applications can be accessed outside of Canvas. If these are used in your course, you can use the following links to access them directly.

• Talis
• Panopto
• Ed Discussion (staff and students can request a login code to access)
• Inspera (student login)

The University has been advised of a global cybersecurity incident affecting the Canvas learning management system used by our staff and students, and in 9,000 educational systems around the world.

The incident relates to Canvas data held by a third party, Instructure, and used within our learning environments and involves unauthorised access by a malicious actor.

Our cybersecurity team is working with Instructure to understand any impacts resulting from this breach. Instructure has advised this may include names, email addresses, student ID numbers and Canvas Inbox and Discussion messages of past and current users. At this stage, no data has been released publicly.

There is no suggestion that any student assessment data is affected, or passwords and single sign-on credentials. Instructure also advises that there is no indication that dates of birth, government identifiers, or financial information were involved in the breach.

The University understands this news may be unsettling, and is actively taking precautions to keep our applications secure.

Phishing is the most likely consequence if it is confirmed University data has been accessed.

Currently, no action is required from staff or students. As a precaution, the University recommends:

• Being cautious of unexpected emails or messages, especially those asking for personal information or prompting urgent action
• Not clicking unfamiliar links or opening unexpected attachments
• Reporting any suspicious messages as follows:
  • Staff report via the IT Service Portal
  • Students report via the Student IT Hub, either online or in person

We will provide updates on this page as more information is confirmed.

Guidance is also available from the government website Own Your Online:

• Scams and fraud
• What is phishing?